One of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century, Charles White (1918-1979) --with amazing spirit, vision, and brilliance--devoted both his life and work to portraying the African American community. With pencil and brush, in black and white or in color, he captured not only the poverty, strife, and despair of the black people but their strength of community, the joy of enlightenment, and the tenderness of kinship as well, rejecting the usual stereotypes of black people as inferior. His canvases, woodcuts, monumental drawings, and murals convey his strong social consciousness and impart the inherent dignity of his subjects.Andrea Barnwell chronicles the highlights of White's career, discusses several of the artist's famous works, and introduces many works from private collections that never before have been examined. Although White's works are in the collections of major museums and libraries, including Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Flint Institute of Art, his place in the annals of art history has never been fully realized.